


Antithesis

by crocobat



Category: Bleach
Genre: Medical Procedures, pain kink mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 16:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16349846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocobat/pseuds/crocobat
Summary: Kenpachi comes in the dead of night, to the one person he knows will give him what he wants.





	Antithesis

**Author's Note:**

> CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT KENPACHI/MAYURI????????????
> 
> i'm on a tirade right now, a campaign, if you will, to get people on board with this ship
> 
> big beefy/small brainy, two dads who lost their daughters in the war, and they always seem to gravitate towards each other, even if its just bickering, right???
> 
> right???????
> 
> i plan on this being a multichaptered, long, slow burn thing but........ive never written anything like that, so we'll see lmao

 

 

"You can't keep coming here."

  
He blinked once, coming back to the world around him from where he'd been lost in his thoughts. Barely tilting his head, he looked to the man next to him, worrying over his arm, who hadn't noticed he wasn't paying attention to his ramblings in the first place.

  
"I do not run a medical bay. I run a laboratory, a place for science, not for stitching beasts up every time they go looking for a fight."

  
"Hn."

  
"Are you listening to me?"

  
Admittedly, no, he hadn't been. He'd been focused only on the sharp pain of the needle pushing in and out of his torn flesh.

  
Every time he'd come knocking on the 12th Division door, bleeding from fresh wounds, Mayuri gave him the same lecture--don't come back, I am not a doctor of medicine, this is not my job.

But every time still, the doors would open for him, and Mayuri would do it all the same.

He wondered if Mayuri knew why he came. He'd never tried to hide it. It wasn't because the 4th Division couldn't do their jobs, or sometimes, that he wouldn't be just fine without having the wound checked out in the first place...

It was because of that needle, in and out, in and out.

Yachiru--Retsu--had known how to make even healing hurt in the most delicious way. She could be gentle, and she had mercy for anyone, save for those who didn't want it.

And she knew how much Kenpachi hated mercy.

With surgical precision, she cut away rotting skin and festering clots, applied stinging antiseptics and burning ointments, pressed too hard at the wound and let it bleed a little longer than good practice would indicate.

Kotetsu, the new captain who'd vowed to carry on her predecessor's kindly ways, had light hands, soft words, and a promise of no more pain.

Mayuri, however, didn't give a shit about how his patients--subjects--felt.

In fact, the more pain the better, it seemed.

That was what Kenpachi wanted, and Mayuri had delivered every time.

It was pain that brought him back again, a deep pressure to the sutures in his arm, bringing blood to the surface of a partially tended lesion. Mayuri's thumb pushed hard against it, as his gold eyes fixed Kenpachi with an annoyed stare.

"Are you _listening_?"

"No."

"You should know it by now anyway. I tell you the same thing every time, and yet every few weeks, you're pounding at my front door."

"You could turn me away," Kenpachi growled lowly, "No one's holding a blade to your neck."

Mayuri scoffed. "I know animals like you very well. You would stand out there 'til you bleed to death. If there's one thing I'll give you, you're persistent, if not simple-minded."

Kenpachi bit back a retort, and let silence fall between them. There was no point in aggravating the smaller man, lest he be thrown out from the 12th Division quarters and have the door slammed in his face for good.

Instead, he let his dark eyes run over the captain who was almost finished with his task.

Most times that he'd come knocking, Mayuri was in full regalia, dressed like a gaudy ornament from some human world holiday. Fully painted, fully decked, gold and purple, stark white and dark black.  
Nothing he'd adorned himself in had ever surprised Kenpachi.

That night, rather, it was the lack of what he'd worn that had stunned him.

Akon, as usual, had opened the door to him, parked him at one of the examination tables and done a preliminary examination. The gash itself, hard earned by picking fights in the outer regions of Rukongai, was not especially long, wide, or deep; just barely enough so that he felt justified in going to have it looked at in the first place.

  
Ikkaku would've sent him if he hadn't gone anyway.

"It's not actually that bad," Akon murmured, carefully clearing the wound of debris, "I can do this myself, I think. Captain's already gone to bed."

"Make it quick then," Kenpachi had said. He felt something--disappointment maybe, or frustration--bubble in his stomach, twitch at the corner of his mouth, and let it go in a deep, growling sigh. Akon gave him an odd look, but whatever had come to mind didn't make it past his lips.

As he adjusted the overhead light, a voice had rung through the lab.

"Ho? And who let you in this time?"

Standing in the far doorway was a man that Kenpachi had never seen before. He realized, momentarily, that he actually had, of course he had, but...

Never like that.

Brown arms, lined and dotted with scars and stitches, crossed over the chest of a plain, dark yukata. His eyes trailed up to a thin face, pointed and angular, set with the only two distinguishing, real characteristics he knew of Kurotsuchi Mayuri:

A shock of blue hair, and sharp, honey gold eyes.

The same eyes that kept careful watch over tying up the last few sutures.

"It's done," Mayuri said, "Stop staring at me."

Kenpachi flexed his arm, and got a sharp swat for his troubles. "You'll split it open again if you keep that up. I won't patch it up twice."

He watched as deft fingers plucked each tool and instrument, carefully setting them aside for sanitation and disposal. Mayuri gave everything in his power not to look at him, acknowledge him in any way, as he went about cleaning drying blood from the table. When he finished, he threw everything away, and threw Kenpachi a pointed look.

"'It's done' means you can leave."

"I speak Japanese just fine."

"Then act like you understand me, and leave. Don't come back here again. And _stop staring at me_."

"I ain't ever seen you like this."

Mayuri paused, face frozen in a look of brief confusion, before his expression turned sour.

"And you never will again, Zaraki," he snarled, "Because I will leave you out in the cold, bleeding to death, if you come knocking on my doors after getting yourself torn to shreds ever again. Do you understand?"

A rumbling chuckle escaped Kenpachi.

"You say that every time, but every time you still let me in."

Golden eyes narrowed.

"You think," he started, and with every beat, every breath he took a step towards the man looming on the other side of the table, "That I don't know why you come to me, don't you. You really think that I'm foolish enough to believe that you just keep coming back because, what, I do a better job treating your papercuts than a medic would? Or maybe simply because I keep letting you back in?

"I know," he said, with a dark glimmer in his eyes and a sneer at the corner of his mouth, ever advancing, "That you're aroused by it. I know that no one else will hurt you like Unohana did, except me, and that's the real reason you keep banging on my door, isn't it? I won't cater to you anymore. _Get out_ ," he finished, almost chest to chest, aquiline nose high in the air and a deep frown below it, "Don't. Come. Back."

His surly expression said he was entirely fed up, and entirely finished.

Kenpachi, however, wasn't.

Suddenly, he felt rather amused.

A wild, barbaric smile flashed across his face.

"I get off on it, huh?" he said, taking an advance of his own. Though he hadn't backed down when Mayuri came to him, the smaller man did immediately, matching him step for step, keeping the space between them as much as he could. Panic began to grow in his features, but never once did he break the gaze between them.

"That's some pretty big shit to talk, isn't it? Especially coming out of your mouth, Mayuri."

" _Captain_ Kurotsu--"

"You, the sickest bastard in all of Seireitei, saying I'm the one who gets off on pain."

For every step he took, Mayuri took one as well. The look in his eyes was mouse-like, scared, like prey in the face of a predator.

"Like you don't get off on giving it," Kenpachi said, laughing.

"Never, with the likes of you--"

With a jolt, Mayuri stumbled, stuttered, squawked as his back hit the large computer system at the far end of the room. He braced himself against the keyboard of it, nowhere to run as his predator came ever closer, caging him in.

"Bullshit. Why else would you let 'the likes of me' in every time, if you weren't runnin' off to your room like an embarrassed kid to go jerk off the second I leave?" Kenpachi said. "Like you're gonna do again tonight?"

They were chest to chest again, Kenpachi leaned in close enough to feel breath on his chin, see the twich of Mayuri's eyes as they flickered between Kenpachi's own, that insidious grin, and the freedom of the empty laboratory behind them.

"Admit it, Mayuri. If I'm the sick one," he said, low and deep, "You're just as fucked up as I am."

Kenpachi slammed his hands down on either side of the smaller man, sending an ear-shattering, cacophonus blast throughout the lab as he smashed the keys of the piano. His prey yelped, jumped, and in doing so inadventently threw himself against Kenpachi, caught in his arms like a snare--

"Master Mayuri?"

Both men whipped towards the small voice that resounded thunderously in the silence. At the entry way, where her father had stood before her, a small girl, barely a toddler peeked around the jamb.

Smaller than Yachiru, even.

"Nemu," Mayuri whispered shakily with audible relief, disentangling himself from the other man without a second glance. "What are you doing up?"

"I'm sorry, Master Mayuri," she mumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "I heard a loud noise. And screaming."

Kenpachi watched, eyes boring into the back of Mayuri's yukata, as he crossed the room and scooped up his daughter with trembling arms.

"That was Captain Zaraki," he said, ignoring how that feral smile had turned into a sneer, "And he's leaving."

"You're the one who screamed."

" _Good night_ , Captain Zaraki," Mayuri said, voice high and tight.

Nemu's small voice, echoing her father's words, barely reached him as the two disappeared through the doorway to the living quarters, and slammed shut behind them.

Kenpachi allowed himself one last snort.

"Fuck you too, then."


End file.
